ACADEMIA Letters
Drawings of traditional Chinese boats from Macao by
François-Edmond Pâris (1832-33)
Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, East-West Institute for Advanced Studies
This research considers the historical interest and value of the folios of annotated drawings of
Chinese boats from Macao that were made by François-Edmond Pâris during the voyage of
the La Favorite to South China in 1832-33. François-Edmond Pâris was born in Paris in 1806,
where he also died in 1893 with the rank of Vice-Admiral of France. Educated at the Naval
Academy in Brest, he began maritime service at the age of twenty, when from 1826 to 1829 he
participated in the voyage of the corvette Astrolabe, commanded by Dumont d’Urvile. This
ship was searching for traces of the fateful expedition commanded by the famous count La
Pérouse to the South Pacific which had vanished 40 years earlier in 1788.1 Next, Pâris left
from 1830 to early 1833 on the grand universal mission of the referred La Favorite led by
Cyrille Pierre Théodore Laplace (1793-1875). He returns to these world voyages a few years
later from 1837 to 1840, serving again under the same Laplace in the long journey of the
L’Artémise.2
Unfortunately, during this adventure Pâris lost part of his left arm in a very unlucky visit
to a foundry in Pondicherry. Despite some other shorter expeditions, and promoted to cap-
tain, he subsequently worked mainly in the deposits of maps and plans of the Navy. In 1856
he was promoted to Commander; two years later, in 1858, he became a Rear Admiral; and in
1864, he reached his final high rank of Vice-Admiral. Thereafter, he devoted the last three
decades of his life to transforming the old Naval Museum of the Louvre into the modern Paris
National Maritime Museum. Along this period the new museum received most of his im-
1
MARCEL, Gabriel. 1888. La Pérouse: récit de son voyage, expédition envoyée à sa recherche, le capitaine
Dillon, Dumont d’Urville, reliques de l’expédition (Edition du centenaire). Paris: Librarie Illustré.
2
HENRICY, Casimir & PÂRIS, François-Edmond. [1865]. Album Pittoresque d’un Voyage Autour du Monde.
Paris: Ch. Noblet.
Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, [email protected]
Citation: Carneiro de Sousa, I. (2021). Drawings of traditional Chinese boats from Macao by François-Edmond
Pâris (1832-33). Academia Letters, Article 3585. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3585.
1
mense collection of hundreds of drawings, paintings, and notes about ships from around the
world made during his maritime travels. François-Edmond Pâris’s refined drawings, obser-
vational qualities, technical knowledge, and abundant studies of vessels from diverse cultures
and geographies turned him into an acclaimed founding father of maritime ethnography.3
Among these legacies, the Maritime Museum in Paris holds a singular manuscript al-
bum gathering the drawings made by François-Edmond Pâris during the world voyage of the
La Favorite.4 It collects an impressive 111 watercolors and three pen drawings, including
27 meticulous technical studies of local boats made in Senegal, the Coromandel Coast, the
Malacca Straits, Manila, South China, Cochinchina, Java, Valparaiso, and Rio de Janeiro.
These full-page sketches are organized in the same format: at the top, in a central position,
appears the name of the country, region, or harbor where the vessel was sighted, the right side
gives the series number of the drawing, and below the image is a descriptive textual legend.
Within the collection, there is a section with the title of “China,” containing 27 drawings. Ex-
cept for the last with a “Northern Province” subtitle, all the other boats belong to the “Canton
Province” and were made during the La Favorite’s stay in Macao from 18 December 1832
to the end of February of the following year. Six of these drawings are of ships that Pâris
classified as “from Macao,” and were observed or travelled on during his extended visit to the
Sino-Portuguese enclave and riverine trips from there to Whampoa and Canton through the
Xijiang River (also labeled Tiger or Canton River) and its channels.
These “China” drawings are detailed watercolors made by an experienced sailor, com-
petent officer, and brilliant observer of the cultural diversity of boats from many parts of
the world. Although Pâris also left us some narrative memories of his travels, including de-
scriptions of Macao, his writing skills pale in comparison to the immense competence of his
drawings of vessels from non-European regions that systematically merge serious technical
rigor with a curiosity for singular cultural details. In consequence, by carefully researching
those six “Macanese” original representations, historians can find key sources for highlighting
the economic, social, and cultural functionalities of these ships that are important for under-
standing the history of Macao in the first decades of the 19th century. During this important
period, the peninsular enclave was still fundamental to the “system of Canton” trade, the sea-
sonal market that was first officially opened to foreign commerce in 1757.
3
NIDERLINDER, Alain. “L’oeuvre artistique de l’amiral Pâris”, in: La Revue Maritime, no. 488, (avril 2010),
pp. 22-27; RIETH, Eric. “La collection de maquettes du fonds amiral Pâris (1806-1893) au Musée national de
la Marine: l’exemple des bateaux de l’Inde et du Sri-Lanka”, in: Outre-mers, tome 88, n°. 332-333 (2e semestre
2001), pp. 231-244.
4
PÂRIS, François-Edmond. 1992. Voyage de la corvette La Favorite en 1830, 1831 et 1832. Collection de
bateaux. Dessin d’après nature para E. Pâris lieut. de vais. [Musée National de la Marine, Paris – Ms. B 178,
1832]. Paris: Anthèse, pp. 122-146.
Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, [email protected]
Citation: Carneiro de Sousa, I. (2021). Drawings of traditional Chinese boats from Macao by François-Edmond
Pâris (1832-33). Academia Letters, Article 3585. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3585.
2
It is also convenient to consider Pâris’s drawings in the narrative context of the journal
of the La Favorite’s world voyage, which was published by Cyrille Pierre Théodore Laplace
just a few months after the return of the expedition to France; two volumes were printed at
the end of 1833 by the royal press, in Paris. Other than the tragic “Laplace” affair in Hawaii,
widely accounted, Laplace’s description of Macao in the second volume became one of the
most influential 19th-century texts about the Sino-Portuguese enclave.5 The French navigator
was very critical, exaggerating the twilight of trade in the city, denouncing the laziness of the
Eurasian population and the vanity of “frivolous” Macanese women, deriding the damaging
influence of the Catholic church to stress a harsh conclusive sentence: “The Chinese regard
Canton as the refuge of all the bad characters from the neighboring lands, and Macao is the
sewer of Canton.”6 Despite some textual criticism regarding the backwardness of Chinese
junks and navigation processes, Laplace’s volumes don’t have any visual interest in these
boats. For example, the chapter on Macao is beautifully, but only, illustrated with a romantic
view of the Guia Hill Fortress and Chapel. Therefore, the Macanese manuscript drawings by
Pâris are not a mere illustration of the La Favorite’s travel narrative but an autonomous work
observing, recording, and trying to represent traditional transportation, labor, and shelter ships
studied and depicted in the city’s harbor and littoral waters.
Chinese Guard Ships of Macao
Following the numeric sequencing of the manuscript album, drawings 48 and 49 present the
first traditional Chinese vessels from Macao, which are called “guard ships.” Both represen-
tations sketch a pair of boats displayed from different observation perspectives, and the first
drawing has a legend (with some textual gaps) explaining: “The other vessels that also survey
the Europeans are specially assigned to the customs service in the vicinity of Macao. They
seem […] as junks, although they are only 15 to 20 meters long […]. The hull is painted
in white, the top of the body in black with large red bands studded with white balls, and the
scaffolding in the bow is red”.7
Despite this summary, the four boats, including the miniature figures that represent local
Chinese, speak for themselves. These vessels were closer to the popular tankas than authentic
junks and they monitored all waterborne traffic for Chinese Customs at the Inner Harbor of
5
LAPLACE, 1833: II, 227-249.
6
LAPLACE, Cyrille Pierre Théodore. 1833. Voyage autour du monde par les mers de l’Inde et de la Chine,
exécuté sur la corvette de l’État ‘La Favorite’, pendant les années 1830, 1831 et 1832. Paris: Imprimerie Royale,
T. II, pp. 227-249.
7
PÂRIS, 1992 [1832]: 114.
Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, [email protected]
Citation: Carneiro de Sousa, I. (2021). Drawings of traditional Chinese boats from Macao by François-Edmond
Pâris (1832-33). Academia Letters, Article 3585. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3585.
3
Macao and at the four river customhouses along the Xijiang River on the fluvial route from
the city to Whampoa. These “guard” boats were much criticized by the mercantile population
and fishermen of the enclave because they were incapable of facing even the weakest attack by
pirates. The Canton imperial administration also criticized these maritime vessels for being
unable to disrupt smuggling, especially the growing opium trade. It is difficult through Pâris’s
drawings to identify any figure remotely close to a soldier or see any military equipment; no
simple canon, or a glimpse of modern weaponry. The images eloquently demonstrate the
fragility of the Chinese imperial maritime defenses in this period (1832/1833), immediately
prior to the eruption of the First Opium War.
[48]: “Macau Guard Ship seen from the front.”
Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, [email protected]
Citation: Carneiro de Sousa, I. (2021). Drawings of traditional Chinese boats from Macao by François-Edmond
Pâris (1832-33). Academia Letters, Article 3585. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3585.
4
[49]: “Macao Guard Ship seen from behind.”
Passenger boat from Macao to Canton
Much more interesting, realistic, and almost photographic, is drawing 51, entitled “Passenger
Ship from Macao to Canton.” It represents Pâris’s documented trip from the Macao peninsula
to the great Chinese metropolis via the Xijiang river in early January 1833. On the boat’s
deck, the figure seated drawing on a board on his knees can only be a suggestion of a self-
portrait of our ethnographic navigator. The other characters, three in official navy uniforms,
but one more distinct than the others, plus a civilian dressed in Western clothes seem to be
the figures of Laplace, his closest officers, and the French Consul in Macao. In this period
and installed since the 1820s, the French Consul was Benoit Gernaert, a wealthy trader in
the city with private interests in Canton.8 Although Pâris calls this boat “large canoe” and
does not give it a definite name these boats were known in Portuguese as “pontões,” literally
meaning “pontoon” or “jetty”, and they were used for the transport of cargo and travelers from
Macao to the vibrant seasonal Canton market, which usually opened between early September
8
SOUSA, Ivo Carneiro de. 2014. Descrições Históricas de Macau em Viajantes Franceses (1623-1900).
Macau: EWIAS Editor, p.139.
Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, [email protected]
Citation: Carneiro de Sousa, I. (2021). Drawings of traditional Chinese boats from Macao by François-Edmond
Pâris (1832-33). Academia Letters, Article 3585. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3585.
5
and the following January. The technical legend of the ship is detailed, recalling a pleasant
riverine trip. He notes that these trips usually took three sluggish days, and foreigners were
forbidden to leave the vessel and visit the diverse inland urban and rural landscapes: “The
Europeans often employ these large canoes to realize the only two residences allowed to them
in China, and then pass through the narrower branches of the Tiger, which are more direct than
those used by the great ships navigating to Whampoa anchorage through Bocca Tigris […].
The boats doing this ascent are, in fact, Chinese; but the Europeans themselves would not be
able to make them more comfortable: the accommodation is vast, high, well ventilated, with
extremely wide benches-alike, covered with mats, and serving as beds, if necessary, placed
along with a large table. The interior, always very clean, is made of varnished wood, carefully
crafted, and the sides are lined with screens to give air […]. Although more elongated than
the others, these boats retain their rounded forms, namely behind a platform supported by a
transom placed above the rudder as in the warships. Like that of the pilot boats, the wing also
has a crosspiece to hold the ropes of the ratchet. The normal length is 18m, the width of 4m,
and the depth of 3.5m. Very large oars composed of two pieces of wood of equal length are
used on board, one is the shovel and the other the lever; very strong moorings in wicker, next
to each other bring together the two pieces that are so closed by the corners that never yield”.9
9
PÂRIS, 1992 [1832]: 114.
Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, [email protected]
Citation: Carneiro de Sousa, I. (2021). Drawings of traditional Chinese boats from Macao by François-Edmond
Pâris (1832-33). Academia Letters, Article 3585. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3585.
6
[51]: “Passenger boat from Macao to Canton.”
Maritime Chinese popular boats from Macao
By contrast to the larger fluvial transport ship, the other three drawings of vessels from Macao
return to depicting popular traditional boats or “tankas”. The first, simply entitled “several
Chinese boats seen in Macao”, merges two ships inland with a larger vessel in the water mar-
gins and portrays nine Chinese maritime workers with their shaved foreheads and pigtails. The
textual legend of the image primarily concentrates on technical details, namely the rudder that
becomes a pivotal element. This stresses the technological backwardness of these traditional
vessels (compared to European vessels of the period): “The rudder of these boats, the crudest
that can be seen, is no more than a plank which rises between two separate plates in the middle
of the open stern, and whose sides, at an obtuse angle, are obliquely secured without anything
binding them. The incoming water is kept in an insulated, well-caulked inner chamber, which
occupies a fifth of the length of the ship; it is also wide enough so the rudder can be turned
left and right, like a paddle, which is necessary because it has no angle on the slide in which
it runs. A similar provision carries the vessel from a considerable body of water […], and
Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, [email protected]
Citation: Carneiro de Sousa, I. (2021). Drawings of traditional Chinese boats from Macao by François-Edmond
Pâris (1832-33). Academia Letters, Article 3585. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3585.
7
this inconvenience is even more significant for junks, sometimes 25m long and 6m wide. The
shapes are relatively flat, and all hull sections are more or less semicircles; the maximum
width is in the fifth from behind. The planks of connections go from side to side, curving
in the front that is flat, quite broad, almost vertical, and often submerged in the inferior part;
they are sometimes somewhat rounded and apply outwardly to the front and back, and those
of the upper part, placed obliquely, are supported by vertical beams. The keel, glued under
the hull and with several holes, follows the curvature of the bottom but does not extend to the
ends […].10
[63]: “Several Chinese boats seen in Macao.”
Image 65 shows the variety of these humble vessels that were the economic backbone
of trade by the Portuguese and Eurasians settled in Macao: they were the main riverine and
sea labor force that sustained the mercantile and productive activities of the Sino-Portuguese
enclave. The legend of the image is short and simple and the boats are recorded as: “These
two modest boats show that, beyond a certain general morphological kinship, there is, in fact,
a great variety of models of Chinese sea and riverboats whose differences are emphasized in
10
PÂRIS, 1992 [1832]: 118.
Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, [email protected]
Citation: Carneiro de Sousa, I. (2021). Drawings of traditional Chinese boats from Macao by François-Edmond
Pâris (1832-33). Academia Letters, Article 3585. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3585.
8
their dimensions, proportions, structures […]”.11
[65]: “Small boats of Canton and Macao.”
The last of the six drawings with a Macao title continues to record the social world of
tankas’ boats. They were used until, almost ruined, they could no longer navigate and were
then transformed into “houses” scattered along the beaches and the inner harbor of Macao.
This final shows figures of women: the famous “tancareiras,” as the Portuguese called them,
who were hard-working and piloted boats that were also their domestic units, transporting
foreigners, traders, and small cargos to the city. They were often the first Chinese described in
European travel books about visits to Macao, and the authors were usually enchanted by their
raw beauty, simple but careful clothing, or the babies on their backs. These women provide a
strong counterpoint to the worst Eurocentric tirades about the “ruthless” Chinese civilization:
they didn’t have tiny, deformed feet, but rather surprisingly normal ones, hardened by work
and life on the edge of social misery.12 The textual legend written by Pâris underlines the
social poverty that his drawing helped to identify in the epochal history of Macao: “These
11
PÂRIS, 1992 [1832]: 118.
12
SOUSA, Ivo Carneiro de. 2011. A Outra Metade do Céu. Escravatura e orfandade femininas, mercado
matrimonial e elites mercantis em Macau (séculos XVI-XVIII). Macau: St. Joseph Academic Press, pp. 119-121.
Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, [email protected]
Citation: Carneiro de Sousa, I. (2021). Drawings of traditional Chinese boats from Macao by François-Edmond
Pâris (1832-33). Academia Letters, Article 3585. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3585.
9
houses seem to be transporting boats used as soon as they get old […]. It is the asylum of the
mob of the population and the numerous maneuvers of those who, having no other resource
than the strength of their arms, are transported with their families and find work in them.
These boats, in great numbers, are tied up among them, and when they cease to serve, they
are thrown to the land where, supported by stones or stakes and almost unrecognizable, they
still harbor poor people”.13
[72]: “Small boats of Canton and Macau.”
References
HENRICY, Casimir & PÂRIS, François-Edmond. [1865]. Album Pittoresque d’un Voyage
Autour du Monde. Paris: Ch. Noblet.
LAPLACE, Cyrille Pierre Théodore. 1833. Voyage autour du monde par les mers de l’Inde
et de la Chine, exécuté sur la corvette de l’État “La Favorite”, pendant les années 1830,
1831 et 1832. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, T. I, pp. 3-21.
MARCEL, Gabriel. 1888. La Pérouse: récit de son voyage, expédition envoyée à sa recherche,
le capitaine Dillon, Dumont d’Urville, reliques de l’expédition (Edition du centenaire).
13
PÂRIS, 1992 [1832]: 118.
Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, [email protected]
Citation: Carneiro de Sousa, I. (2021). Drawings of traditional Chinese boats from Macao by François-Edmond
Pâris (1832-33). Academia Letters, Article 3585. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3585.
10
Paris: Librarie Illustré.
NIDERLINDER, Alain. “L’oeuvre artistique de l’amiral Pâris”, in: La Revue Maritime, no.
488, (avril 2010), pp. 22-27.
PÂRIS, François-Edmond. 1992. Voyage de la corvette La Favorite en 1830, 1831 et 1832.
Collection de bateaux. Dessin d’après nature para E. Pâris lieut. de vais. [Musée Na-
tional de la Marine, Paris – Ms. B 178, s.d.]. Paris: Anthèse, pp. 122-146.
RIETH, Eric. “La collection de maquettes du fonds amiral Pâris (1806-1893) au Musée
national de la Marine: l’exemple des bateaux de l’Inde et du Sri-Lanka”, in: Outre-mers,
tome 88, n°. 332-333 (2e semestre 2001), pp. 231-244.
SOUSA, Ivo Carneiro de. 2011. A Outra Metade do Céu. Escravatura e orfandade femini-
nas, mercado matrimonial e elites mercantis em Macau (séculos XVI-XVIII). Macau: St.
Joseph Academic Press.
SOUSA, Ivo Carneiro de. 2014. Descrições Históricas de Macau em Viajantes Franceses
(1623-1900). Macau: EWIAS Editor.
Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, [email protected]
Citation: Carneiro de Sousa, I. (2021). Drawings of traditional Chinese boats from Macao by François-Edmond
Pâris (1832-33). Academia Letters, Article 3585. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3585.
11
